Carl Luna is a professor of Political Science at San Diego Mesa College and a lecturer on politics and international political economy at the University of San Diego.
Carl writes for CityBeat semi-regularly. Look for him at the CityBeat website or in the print edition, from any of our 1,400 boxes around town. New editions available every Wednesday.

Let Them Eat Cake? They Don’t Even Get No Stinkin’ Cake.

July 16, 2010 — Carl Luna

While perusing my morning NYT last week two articles jumped out at me. The pair perfectly capture the Wilted Gilded Age we find our selves in. The first dealt with the interesting little irony that the rich are actually and calculatingly walking away from more mortgages than average households. It would appear that the WSJ’s moralizing about moral hazards moralizing ends somewhere west of the Hamptons. The second article dealt with how the ivy covered towers of Academe are now being turned into the country clubs of the kids of the ruling classes, complete with spa-quality student centers. Now public schools and community colleges are also spending more on student services according to the article. But they are doing so to deal with a) a vast backlog of repair and expansion work that has been sidelined for decades; and b) the crush of lower-income students trying to ride out the Great Recession in a classroom. (Note to students: choose a major that will take 20 years to complete. If the economy hasn’t recovered by then maybe an elder relative will have kicked off in the interim and left you a small bequest….). Private schools are putting in tapas bars. Oh, such a world of difference

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3 Responses to “Let Them Eat Cake? They Don’t Even Get No Stinkin’ Cake.”

A couple of questions here:
Who exactly are “the rich”?
What does it mean when we talk about “the ruling class”?

I’ve watched this real estate bubble grow to monstrous proportions starting circa 1997 and lasting roughly a decade. It’s all part and parcel of the sustained era of denial whose origins coincide neatly with the inauguration of St. Ronnie on 01/20/81. “The rich” include many who are only aspirationally rich in that their wealth does not come from the possession of capital which can support them without the capital’s dissipation. Instead they depend on a potentially interruptible income stream which, though it may be much more than some of ours, can still be fragile. Many of these people over-reached during the bubble, buying more house than they could actually afford to pay off, and counting on the mana of ongoing appreciation to make it all work out. Once that prospect fades and many of their option ARMS start recasting, these people often have more options (can leverage the purchase of a cheaper house before defaulting on the big fancy crib) and are free to exercise the strategic default option. I personally know many such people and they are often poseurs, you know…”All hat, no cows”.

As for who is “the ruling classes”, maybe we are, in the eyes of many people. After all, aren’t department heads and professional academics often considered part of the ruling class? Isn’t it true those folks would be considered by many to be the ones who pull the strings? We liberals tend to over use the term “ruling class”, sometimes without the requisite sense of irony…

fo real is the nice cake.can i help the recipe of cake.my friend i would like to establish the small indurstry to produce that product in tanzania how do you fill about it my friend its me juma hassan from tanzania.